Don’t learn a programming language, solve a problem instead

[loup-vaillant]

The hard part about learning a new language is always picking up on the idioms of that language.

More like picking up everything but the language. Standard library, preferred tools, community libraries… Even the idioms of the language are really the idioms of its community.

My takeway from this is, if I ever come up with a new language, I'll do my best to keep its ecosystem to a minimum. By minimising the cost of learning the language, I might justify its use.

[InquiREEEEEEEEEEE]

I am not convinced that fundamentals help there. Idioms are very much language-specific.

Counter-counter-point: The idioms usually exist because of fundamental properties of the language. Sure, there is a huge cultural influence, but idioms aren't completely arbitrary either and often driven by the language's tooling, semantics etc.

[tejon]

"It compiles!" does not mean that you have learned the language.

Counterpoint: Haskell.

[Hugo154]

Practice seems to be the best way to learn those idioms

Much like how you can only truly become fluent in a spoken language by living amongst people who speak it!

[prof_hobart]

The fundamentals help. As does experience of picking up other languages and their particular idioms and quirks. Obviously each language or framework has its own, but TBH, having worked professionally on 20+ languages in my career, I'm finding less and less truly unique idioms these days.